What do you do when you are not able to sell your product on its core strength?
Either you are forced to modify your product or reduce its prices to remain competitive with other brands who are more popular in the same market. Blackberry smartphone used to be connoisseur of all eyes for its enterprise functions and was preferred by business customers.
Alas! that is not the case now because of strong emergence of iPhones and Android smartphones especially of Samsung that even business users have switched their loyalty to these devices. Demand for BlackBerry phones is sliding everywhere and even in its primary markets like India, USA and unfortunately in its backyard in Canada also.
In order to remain afloat in India market, BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion today slashed prices of its handsets by up to 26 % as it looks to grab a bigger share of the smartphone market in India. The reduction in prices of handsets comes after the the Canadian company cut prices of its tablet PC PlayBook in December last year.
“RIM as a brand has moved from just an enterprise device to as a more consumer device. Be it our services or the product, we have seen a strong uptake by the youth and therefore, to get the devices into more hands, we are cutting the prices,” RIM India Managing Director Sunil Dutt told news agency-PTI.
The price of entry-level model – Curve 8520 – has been reduced by over 18 per cent to Rs 8,999 from Rs 10,990 and the price of Torch 9860 has been reduced by over 26 % to Rs 21,990 from Rs 29,990 earlier. The retail price of Curve 9380 and Curve 9360 has been reduced to Rs 16,990 and Rs 18,990, respectively. The handsets were earlier available for Rs 20,990 (Curve 9380) and Rs 19,990 (Curve 9360). However, above reduced prices are suggested MRP and these devices are available less than MRP in retail outlets.
According to RIM,India, above four smartphones comprise a bulk of sales in the country and it is 60 per cent of the business from India. “The focus is not just on reducing prices, but we want to address a larger number of people and give them the overall experience of BlackBerry. We will continue to focus on bringing locally relevant products, services and applications to Indian consumers,” said RIM India, MD.
By slashing prices drastically, RIM intend to leverage in mid-segment of the market, which has lot of potential in India. As blogged by us earlier, we were expecting cutting of prices of smartphones and tablets by the vendors to compete in highly price sensitive market of India. We expect that RIM will slash the prices further in the coming weeks.
Blackberry seems to drop unhappily when it moves toward to pretty covering of its phones. We are looking for better price options on Bold series. An improvement for either its bold series or curve would be additional smart move than price cut. Even Blackberry curves 8520 neither contain a pdf viewer nor it contains an office editor and these two functionallities are essential in order to be a great smartphone. RIM must think resources and power on building quality. No wonder if they will reduce price of its bold family.